It used to be all boozy lunches and late-night carousing. Now it’s hyperbaric chambers and longevity chat. Andrew Carnie, CEO of the private club, explains how life and trends have changed since the Covid era
F
riday night in the north of England. On the ninth floor of the old Granada Studios, a very chi-chi crowd is drinking tequila and eating crisps. Not Walkers out of the bag, mind, but canapes of individual crisps with creme fraiche and generous dollops of caviar. A young woman – leather shorts, chunky boots, neon lime nails, artfully messy bob – winks at me from the other side of the silver tray. “Ooh, caviar. Very posh for Manchester.”
Soho House’s 48th members’ club has caused quite the stir. Thirty years after Nick Jones opened the first club in Soho, London, the first north of England outpost of the empire is raising eyebrows. An exclusive club, in the city that AJP Taylor described as “the only place in England which escapes our characteristic vice of snobbery”. (The home, after all, of the Guardian.) An open-air rooftop pool, in the climate that fostered the textile industry because the rain created the perfect cool, damp conditions for spinning cotton. Will it work?
A 2,500-strong waitlist – the highest of any Soho House worldwide – suggests it just might. Rewind a few hours before the party, and I am with the boss, Andrew Carnie, CEO of Soho House. The space is teeming with workers in hi-vis jackets and cleaners wielding mops, and Primal Scream’s rider (bottles of spirits, along with jars of chamomile teabags) is still being installed in a makeshift dressing room, but Carnie is convinced the timing is perfect. Born 30 miles away in Preston, he has seen Manchester “change dramatically, and flourish dramatically. It has physically expanded, and extended its worldview. Hospitality has boomed, the creative industries have grown, the universities are thriving and it seems like a lot of folks who go to universities stay, which is great in the city.” Tomorrow, a second opening night will see Loyle Carner perform; in February, when the Brit awards moves from London to the city’s Co-op Live Arena, Soho House Manchester will host the afterparty. “I think this is going to be one of our most successful houses,” says Carnie.
